First Look Photos – Without a Tap on the Shoulder

Hi everyone. I am wondering if anyone did a first look without doing the walk up and touch your groom on the shoulder thing. I am pretty dead set on doing a first look, but I don’t like the idea of the way it’s traditionally done. I would love to see pics of those of you who have done it differently. Thanks!

srob5286: I haven’t done this as I’m still engaged but could you maybe be standing behind a door he could swing open? Or you could swing it open? Or have someone else swing it open? (I think you get the idea haha).

srob5286: I’m not married yet, but I’m planning a first look. I have decided against the “shoulder tap” simply because I feel like when FI turns around, he won’t get a good look at me. Instead, I want to approach him while he’s turned around (but be maybe five to seven feet behind him) then have our photographer help me get my dress all neat, and then someone will count down from three and he can turn around. That way he gets to take in the whole look of the dress and can take a minute to really take it in before we kiss. I’ve seen a lot of first looks where the groom turns around and they immediately embrace and I think it’s adorable, but I’ll be damned if FI doesn’t look me up and down first.

My fiance and I are going to do a balloon first look 🙂 We will both be holding balloons in front of us f(in our wedding colors of course lol) and as I walk toward him, we will release them. I love this way of doing a first look because 1) awesome pics! and 2) we BOTH get to experience the “first look” by getting to really see each other for the first time at the SAME time. like this…

My husband turned his back to where I was coming out. I was led to him by our photographer, and we were put back to back, and held hands. On the count of three we dropped one hand and turned to face each other.

I don’t have pics yet, but I wanted to have a similar effect of him seeing me walk down the aisle. We decided to take them at a place that had a long hallway to achieve this effect.

The photographer had him turn with his back to where I would be arriving. Once I started to walk towards him, she had him turn around to face me so we got a full body view of eachother. She stood facing him to catch his reaction, one of her assistants faced me to get my reaction to his, and another assistant got a shot of the whole thing from a distance.

I started at about 20 feet away and even from that far, with teary eyes I could see his mouth form the words “WOW”. I can’t wait to see the pro pics because I just know she captured the magic of the moment. I will ddefinitely post again when I get them!

jennabee1218: oooh, I love the balloon idea! I wish I had heard of this earlier since I wanted to incorporate balloons into our engagement shoot but didn’t get a chance to.

srob5286: I didn’t like the idea of the shoulder tap either. We had his back turned and when I got within about 8-10 feet of him I called his name and he turned around. Figured that gave him the chance to see me approaching, like walking down the aisle. Both our videographer and photographer mentioned that it may be hard to capture our emotions when we saw each other if we didn’t get close when the look happened. Our photographer was still able to get great photos of our facial expressions and first look. Can’t comment about the videographer, since we still don’t have our video. I do know that the video guy had us “stage” the walk towards each other again, and the facial expressions and emotions are definitely not reproducible the second time.

Releasing balloons is basically like just littering a crapload of litter. Birds and sea animals eat them and die. UGH WHY IS THIS A THING. I would feel so guilty releasing a bunch of animal-killing trash into the air :/

Anyway, OP, we did a first look and instead of going all the way up and tapping him, I think I just stood about 6′ back and said “hey!” You’ll have to coordinate with your photographer to make sure you’re in the same frame, etc. I think that’s part of the reason the bride and groom are often close together.